The US Department of State has approved an arms sale to Taiwan totaling about US$8 billion (NT$258 billion) and including 66 F-16 aircraft and 75 F110 General Electric engines and other systems. The package would include the latest model of Lockheed Martin Corp’s F-16C/D Block 70 aircraft.
The sale was proposed in 2005 by then-president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) administration, when I served as vice policy minister of national defense.
Upon acquiring consent from the US Department of Defense (DOD), I returned to Taiwan to lobby legislators on both sides of the aisle and succeeded in persuading the legislature to pass a special budget. However, then-US president George W. Bush’s administration was reluctant to provoke China with an arms sale, so the deal was put aside.
In other words, the arms sale package approved by the US last month is essentially an old deal that was proposed and granted, with a special budget, by the legislature 15 years ago.
The key figures in approving the sale this time were former US national security adviser John Bolton, US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs Randall Schriver, and US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs David Stilwell.
Thanks to their support after assuming office, Taiwan has in the past few months been able to successfully upgrade a lot of weaponry and equipment, including the procurement of F-16C/D aircraft.
The importance of the arms sale cannot be overlooked. For more than 20 years, China has played a disproportionately large role in discussions of US arms sales to Taiwan, including the deal turned down by the Bush administration in 2005 — Taiwan’s earliest request to purchase the latest F-16 model.
Since then, China has effectively imposed constraints on the items and timetable of US arms sales to Taiwan through threats and coercion.
In light of this, as the details of the deal are negotiated with the US, the government should seize the opportunity provided by this major breakthrough and aim for a technology transfer by allowing some components to be manufactured and assembled in Taiwan.
As the deal amounts to US$8 billion, more than two-thirds of the national defense budget, it is time that the government urged the US to implement the Taiwan-US Industrial Cooperation Plan by including price, training, maintenance and technology transfers for manufacturing major components as required items in the contract to comply with the requirements and spirit of national defense autonomy stipulated in articles 22 and 23 of the National Defense Act (國防法).
The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), a DOD branch responsible for military sales, said in an official notification to the US Congress that the State Department on Aug. 20 “made a determination approving the present arms sale and thereby delivered the required certification notifying Congress of it.”
The news release is publicly available on the DSCA’s Web site, and the sale is expected to take effect next month.
After Taiwan’s air force receives an official draft of the Letter of Offer and Acceptance, the government would confirm the procurement and refer to the special budget quota reviewed and passed by the legislature as the cap.
The government would then conduct studies and discussions with the US about the details of the deal, including items, numbers, timetable and price.
The process will be completed once the Taiwan and the US sign the Letter of Offer and Acceptance.
When the US sells F-16 jets to Turkey and South Korea, the aircraft are assembled in those countries according to their respective contracts, which makes the price vary. The warplane’s core technologies, such as engines and radar, are provided by the manufacturer, and the two countries have the basic maintenance capacity to fix minor problems with components and avionics.
During my term as vice minister of defense, I took part in the US-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference in Washington and met several retired US generals, who told me that the US likes to sell arms to Taiwan because the government never bargains and always makes a lump-sum purchase, paying the US without discussing issues such as technology transfer or local assembly.
They said that Singapore was a headache, because the country not only bargained, but also wanted to send technicians to the US to learn, and they asked the manufacturer to set up a branch company in Singapore. Once the aircraft were delivered, Singaporean engineers could repair some parts when necessary.
However, Taiwan would have to send components back to the manufacturer for repairs, which may take three to more than six months. This explains why probably less than half of the nation’s 144 F-16A/B jets are ready for use.
A similar problem could also occur with the F-16C/D jets.
The government should try its hardest to realize the goal of defense industry innovation in its proposed “five plus two” innovative industries plan.
Aerospace Industrial Development Corp, the nation’s largest civilian and military aircraft manufacturer, holds the contracts for building 66 advanced trainer jets and upgrading the more than 144 F-16 jets currently in service.
While the company is competent enough to take a leading role in Taiwan’s aerospace and defense industries, the government or the legislature should still aim for a transfer of technology to have some components of the F-16C/D jets assembled domestically.
Michael Tsai is president of Taiwan United Nations Alliance and a former minister of national defense.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS